Americans are using the time-honored democratic tradition of town halls to voice their concerns about tariffs, layoffs of veterans who are federal workers, and the stubbornly high price of eggs—but some lawmakers aren’t having it. Sen. Roger Marshall walked out of a town hall in Oakley, Kansas. A woman in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was even dragged out of a public meeting by plainclothes private security.

As reports of raucous meetings have piled up, Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, made a surprising recommendation to his GOP colleagues earlier this month: stop the public in-person meetings. House Speaker Mike Johnson quickly embraced the idea. But as the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, where I work, explained in a letter to Johnson last week, this is a bad idea, and unconstitutional, too.

Town halls and similar events can be unruly and unpredictable, but non-violent debate, disagreement, and protest are the very hallmarks of democracy. Speaker Johnson is a former constitutional lawyer, so he well knows the First Amendment prohibits government officials from excluding citizens from public forums—such as city council meetings, school board meetings, and in-person town halls—because of their political viewpoints.

Some lawmakers have recently expressed frustration that town hall attendees may be from a different district, or a different political party, or even that they are “professional protesters” bent on causing trouble. Such lamentations have an unfortunate history on both sides of the aisle. Democratic Party leaders claimed that waves of anger-filled town halls protesting proposed healthcare legislation in 2009 and 2010 were due to “paid stooges.” Both then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, in 2017, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer referred to outspoken town hall attendees as participants in “Astroturf” campaigns that did not represent genuine voter sentiments. Even if such accusations proved true, it would not negate the right of dissenters to be heard in these public fora.

Speaker Johnson and Rep. Hudson are now advising their colleagues to move their town halls online, including turning them into Facebook Live events that would, per a news report, “allow moderators to filter questions and comments.” But the First Amendment protections that apply to in-person public forums apply when public officials hold town halls online. This is true even when officials conduct public forums on private social media platforms like Facebook. In a case filed by the Knight Institute against President Trump in his first term, the court of appeals held that President Trump’s blocking of critics from his Twitter (now X) account violated the First Amendment.

As we wrote in our letter to Speaker Johnson, “The First Amendment does not permit government officials to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint when they host public forums in order to speak to, and hear from, members of the public.” This is true whether the forum is in-person or virtual.

There is an amount of irony in the GOP stance. In a recent speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance suggested that elected officials won’t survive politically if they are “running in fear of [their] own voters.”  Whatever the merits of the rest of his speech, the Vice President was right about this. Elected representatives benefit from being exposed to the wide range of views held by their constituents. And their constituents also benefit from exposure to the views of their neighbors, which may differ from their own. No one benefits if expressive forums that are integral to our democracy are transformed into echo chambers – or simply shut down.

Our system of self-government, the First Amendment, and the preservation and fostering of democratic culture demand open, public forums that permit engagement with elected officials—no matter who voted them into office, nor the party to which they belong. Speaker Johnson should heed these points as he guides his caucus.